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Ecological status classification of the Taizi River Basin, China: a comparison of integrated risk assessment approaches

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Abstract

Integrated risk assessment approaches allow to achieve a sound evaluation of ecological status of river basins and to gain knowledge about the likely causes of impairment, useful for informing and supporting the decision-making process. In this paper, the integrated risk assessment (IRA) methodology developed in the EU MODELKEY project (and implemented in the MODELKEY Decision Support System) is applied to the Taizi River (China), in order to assess its Ecological and Chemical Status according to EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) requirements. The available dataset is derived by an extensive survey carried out in 2009 and 2010 across the Taizi River catchment, including the monitoring of physico-chemical (i.e. DO, EC, NH3–_N, chemical oxygen demand (COD), biological oxygen demand in 5 days (BOD5) and TP), chemical (i.e. polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and metals), biological (i.e. macroinvertebrates, fish, and algae), and hydromorphological parameters (i.e. water quantity, channel change and morphology diversity). The results show a negative trend in the ecological status from the highland to the lowland of the Taizi River Basin. Organic pollution from agriculture and domestic sources (i.e. COD and BOD5), unstable hydrological regime (i.e. water quantity shortage) and chemical pollutants from industry (i.e. PAHs and metals) are found to be the main stressors impacting the ecological status of the Taizi River Basin. The comparison between the results of the IRA methodology and those of a previous study (Leigh et al. 2012) indicates that the selection of indicators and integrating methodologies can have a relevant impact on the classification of the ecological status. The IRA methodology, which integrates information from five lines of evidence (i.e., biology, physico-chemistry, chemistry, ecotoxicology and hydromorphology) required by WFD, allows to better identify the biological communities that are potentially at risk and the stressors that are most likely responsible for the observed alterations. This knowledge can be beneficial for a more effective restoration and management of the river basin ecosystem.

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Acknowledgments

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement no. 269233—Global Partners in Contaminated Land Management (GLOCOM) and National Key Science and Technology Special Program of China—‘Water Pollution Control and Treatment’ (2012ZX07501-001-02; 2012ZX07501-001-04). We would like to thank Dr Xiaodong Qu and Dr Weijing Kong for their support on dataset collection and expert opinion on Taizi River Basin.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Water Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China

    Juntao Fan

  2. State Key Laboratory of Environmental Criteria and Risk Assessment, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing, 100012, China

    Juntao Fan, Wei Meng, Yuan Zhang, Yun Zhou, Sen Ding & Jun Wan

  3. Laboratory of Riverine Ecological Conservation and Technology, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing, 100012, China

    Juntao Fan, Wei Meng, Yuan Zhang, Yun Zhou, Sen Ding & Jun Wan

  4. Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics, Ca’ Foscari University Venice, Venice, Italy

    Elena Semenzin, Elisa Giubilato, Andrea Critto & Alex Zabeo

  5. State Key Joint Laboratory of Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China

    Mengchang He & Chunye Lin

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  1. Juntao Fan
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  2. Elena Semenzin
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  3. Wei Meng
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  9. Sen Ding
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  10. Jun Wan
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  11. Mengchang He
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Correspondence to Yuan Zhang or Andrea Critto.

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Fan, J., Semenzin, E., Meng, W. et al. Ecological status classification of the Taizi River Basin, China: a comparison of integrated risk assessment approaches. Environ Sci Pollut Res 22, 14738–14754 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-015-4629-x

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